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We’ve got some exciting brand new interviews on the show today. The price of gasoline tops $2 and it’s hitting Canadian families’ wallets hard. But big oil is cashing in on billions. Where’s all the money going, well billions and billions of it is headed to Houston Texas as windfall profits for the giant oil corporations. Keith Brooks from Environmental Defence in Toronto tells about this amazing national secret.
Ron Robinson is a Nelson climate activist and an artist. He’s combining his talent with steady work on the climate crisis. Now he’s fundraising for West Kootenay Climate Hub. And doing more, as he tells us.
Stand.Earth put out a report tracking the on going logging of old growth in the province. Despite all the province’s protestations that its protecting old growth forest…. the logging trucks are rolling in a big way. Tegan Hansen tells us about what they found.
LINKS
Stand.Earth’s report on BC Old Growth
Environmental Defence: Big Oil made $12 Billion in 3 months, and they’ll still fight climate action at every step
Search: EnvironmentalDefence.ca Big Oil.
West Kootenay Climate Hub
WestKootenayClimateHub.ca
EVENTS
Ron Robinson’s Art Sale to benefit West Kootenay Climate Hub
https://www.westkootenayclimatehub.ca/event-details/thanks-giving-fundraiser
Public engagement on permanent public transit funding in Canada – By September 30th
The Government of Canada has committed to invest $3 billion annually in permanent public transit funding, starting in 2026-27. We are now engaging with the public to get ideas, and solutions to inform the design and delivery of permanent public transit funding. Examples include subways, light rail transit, modernization of bus fleets, multipurpose paths, cycling lanes and other innovative mobility solutions. Please make a written submission.
https://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/transit-transport/consultation-eng.html
WEBINAR: Citizen Oil: How oil lobbyists are hiding behind the maple leaf to protect their profits and delay climate action
Thur. Sept. 15, 7 p.m. ET
Hosted by Stand.Eearth’s Tzeporah Berman, the conversation will focus on how Big Oil flexes it political muscles to block meaningful climate action in Canada and what we can do about it. As panellists Gordon Laxer and Tim Wood have extensively documented, the oil and gas industry does much more than just dispatch lobbyists to Parliament Hill. In recent years, major oil companies have invested heavily in building up pro-oil citizens’ front groups while allying with sympathetic politicians and journalists to attack environmentalists as illegitimate, “foreign-funded,” and “un-Canadian.” In the process, they are trying to twist the very definition of Canadian national identity around extractivist interests, with echoes that could be heard in the “Freedom Convoy.” But behind all of their furious flag-waving, Big Oil lobbyists are hiding a dirty secret: the industry itself is overwhelmingly foreign-owned.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZJvjnUOnS_q9RQ6G_LpEuA
ENVIRONMENT NEWS
Boundary Bay Conservation Committee on the lower mainland is raising concerns about plans for big increases in LNG Tanker traffic on the Fraser River, in the Burrard Inlet, and through the Salish Sea.
They say the Governments of Canada and B.C. refuse to appropriately call for a federal Review Panel Environmental Assessment of plans for massive, full-scale LNG operations, including an LNG Marine Terminal, at Tilbury Island, Delta.
Boundary Bay Conservation says the governments are avoiding a thorough safety assessment process. They say that gradual project creep is allowing the Governments of Canada and B.C. to gradually expand a small LNG operation at Tilbury Island without any environmental assessments.
In 2015, the federal National Energy Board granted Tilbury LNG a licence to export 3.5 million tonnes of LNG annually. Through Orders-in-Council in 2013 and 2014, the B.C. Government permitted a 46-times increase in liquefaction and a new storage tank that almost tripled LNG storage capacity.
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A Dutch city will become the first in the world to ban meat advertising from public spaces in an effort to reduce consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Haarlem, which lies to the west of Amsterdam and has a population of about 160,000, will enact the prohibition from 2024 after meat was added to a list of products deemed to contribute to the climate crisis.
The ban also covers holiday flights, fossil fuels and cars that run on fossil fuels. The ban is delayed until 2024 due to existing contracts with companies that sell the products.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/09/12/news/dutch-city-banning-meat-ads
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A BC Marine Protected Area network – co-developed by 17 First Nations, BC and Canada – is breaking new ground in terms of Indigenous co-governance and upholds the stewardship laws and values of coastal Indigenous Peoples.
The proposed plan for an MPA in the Great Bear Sea around Haida Gwaii will be released soon, and decision-makers will seek input from Canadians and coastal residents. The Network says that establishment of this protected area can help fish populations and ecosystems recover and generate long term economic benefits.
The West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation has launched a fundraising drive to help make the Great Bear Sea marine protected area a reality. You can find it at:
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The risk of serious climate “tipping points” will rise dramatically if countries fail to hold global warming to the Paris agreement target of 1.5°C, according to a new study in the journal Science.
Even at the today’s average global temperature increase—a rise of 1.1°C driven by profligate use of fossil fuels and the destruction of vital natural ecosystems—there could be devastating, irreversible consequences that would permanently change the planetary climate regime. That’s the conclusion of a European research team.
And yet “the world is heading towards 2° to 3°C of global warming,” said Johann Rockström, co-chair of the Earth Commission and director of the Potsdam Institute, one of the authors.
The study found that five tipping points, including the abrupt thaw of the permafrost in the boreal forest, and the end of an ocean current system in the Labrador Sea are “possible” under current levels of global warming.
Those two tipping points are in Canada.
The study published Friday in Science magazine suggests four tipping points will escalate from “possible” to “likely” at 1.5 C of global warming. These include the abrupt thaw of the boreal permafrost, the collapse of the ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica and a rapid die-off of coral reefs.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/tipping-point-climate-change-paris-agreement-1.6577630
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A northern Alberta First Nation has filed what experts say is the province’s first lawsuit claiming cumulative effects from industry, agriculture, and settlements are so pervasive that they violate the band’s treaty rights.
Duncan’s First Nation, southwest of Peace River, alleges the province has permitted so much activity and sold off so much Crown land that band members can only live their constitutionally guaranteed way of life with great difficulty, The Canadian Press reports.
“Alberta has engaged in a pattern of conduct that has significantly diminished the (Nation’s) right to hunt, fish, and trap as part of their way of life,” says the statement of claim, filed in Edmonton in July.
“Habitats have been fragmented, lands and waters have been degraded, substances have been introduced that cause legitimate fears of contamination, and pollution and lands have been put to uses that are incompatible with the continued meaningful exercise of (the Nation’s) treaty rights.”
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Climate politics in Australia has changed dramatically with a new government and the country is now debating how fast to cut climate emissions, not whether to cut them.
The Greens want cuts of 70% by 2030, while independent pro-climate lawmakers, like balance of power Senator David Pocock, are calling for reductions closer to 60%. That’s a tall ask for a country where coal and gas count for almost a quarter of total exports.
Parliamentary mathematics means the government must negotiate with pro-climate action politicians if it wants to pass any of its agenda easily. In the Senate they need the 12 votes held by the Australian Greens and one from an independent senator.
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Canada has once again invoked a longstanding treaty with the US as it seeks to keep a controversial cross-border pipeline open, warning of “significant” economic damage to both countries in the event of a shutdown.
Canada’s foreign minister said Line 5, a pipeline operated by Calgary-based Enbridge, was a critical source of energy security.
Built in 1953, the 645-mile pipeline travels through Michigan and under the Great Lakes to deliver nearly half of the oil needs of Ontario and Quebec, as well as propane for the state of Michigan.
The defensive posture from Canada comes as the Bad River Band, an Indigenous tribe in northern Wisconsin, argues that Enbridge no longer has the right to cross its land after its easement expired.
The dispute marks the latest front in the battle against a pipeline that Canada has said is vital to its energy needs.
The Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has previously raised fears that a failure in the pipeline could cause catastrophic environmental damage.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/30/canada-us-pipeline-line-5-treaty
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A new report suggests electric vehicle charging times could be drastically cut to as low as just ten minutes… about the same length of time as a gas fill up.
Researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory have devised a new way to charge EV batteries to 90% within 10 minutes.
Researchers say the new charging model could be used to help design new batteries, but they likely won’t make their way into EV markets for another five years.
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A new case study from Alberta shows that when regulators force the issue and producers of fossil fuels get serious, the companies can drastically reduce their methane emissions without any immediate reduction in their oil and gas extraction.
The results matter because methane is a climate pollutant with about 85 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, the span when humanity will be scrambling to get the climate emergency under control. During the latest round of science reporting from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), experts pointed to methane controls as one of the most important short-term steps for rapidly reducing emissions, and fossil fuels extraction is one of the biggest methane sources.
The case study from Alberta’s Peace River region lands just as the Trudeau government is working on regulations aimed at reducing the fossil sector’s methane emissions 75% from 2012 levels by 2030, the Calgary-based Pembina Institute says.
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